5 March 2017

Sandford and Faber and Mamma (1)

Just down the road from where we live, and across the flood-plain of the Thames, is the Church of Sandford upon Thames: which has a marvellous piece of undamaged medieval sculpture which survived by being carefully buried face-downwards so as to look like a paving stone in the Churchyard. Disinterred in 1723, it is MariaAssumpta, her aureole clutched by some very determined angels and at the bottom two angels holding a carved stone reliquary (empty). I wonder how many churches in England tried to protect their treasures in this way, and when. We shouldn't assume that it had to be in 1546/9; there is evidence that a great deal survived until the Civil War.

The officiating priest in 1839 was that admirable (why is there no cause for his beatification?) missionary for Jesus and hymnographer, Fr Faber, composer of so many of the lovely hymns in the English Catholic Hymn Book (see the post of February 4). Of course he was still an Anglican at the time he was at Sandford. A devoted client of our blessed Lady, it is recorded that after one particularly moving Marian Extravaganza at Brompton he asked, in tears, 'Do you think Mamma was pleased?'

He is now interred in the Brompton Oratory, which he founded; the only church in London where I feel really at home. I wonder how his spiritual journey was affected by his years at Sandford, looking at that early sixteenth century carving of Mamma's Glory; and whether, amidst the Baroquery which he assembled for his Oratory (built after his death), he ever thought back to his days under our Lady's care in a little church by the Thames.

I include below a comment made some years ago by my friend Professor William Tighe, who seems to stroll in and out of the prosopography of the Tudor Court with distracting familiarity.

7 comments:

The Lords of the Manor of Sandford-on-Thames from 1541 onwards to the family's extinction in the male line (in the persons of two brothers, both of them Franciscan friars) in the 18th Century were successive members of the Powell family, originally Cardiganshire yeomen who rose to gentry status as stewards of th manor of Ewelme under Sir Henry Norris (one of Henry VIII's Privy Chamber, executed in 1536 for supposed adultry with Anne Boleyn).

Edmund Powell (d.1591), grandson of the Welsh yeoman, was a student at the Middle Temple in Queen Mary's reign, and in 1559 became a Gentleman Pensioner at the new queen's court -- a position he lost in 1571 when it emerged (in the course of the investigation of the Ridolphi Plot) that he had been involved in discussions with servants of the Earl of Arundel and Arundel's son-in-law, Lord Lumley, about how to break the Scots Queen from her captivity and spirit her away to France. although convicted of treason in 1572, he was released and pardoned in 1574, but had moved over to outright recusancy by 1577; and his family remained recusant until their extinction.

Perhaps the Powells may have added their assistance to the preservation of these Catholic memorabilia.

Recall, too, our visit to Sandford in 2015, and the time we spent reading the inscription on the Powell family tombs - and how we were taken by the laconic inscription on the tomb of a Powell widow on the chancel floor - from 1692! - ending c. a. p. d. (cuius animae Deus propietur).

It is rumoured that Fr Faber's mortal remains were as elusive as Bl Cardinal Newman's.When the time came for him to be translated into the finished Church of the Brompton Oratory all that was found in his coffin was a pair of shoes.

Sandford is an interesting place: it had a recusant connection too; the old Kinghts' Preceptory had a chapel in the grounds where Blessed George Napier, one of the Oxford Martyrs, was buried. The building is now a hotel, I think. You can read about it at length in Dom Bede Camm's Forgotten Shrines— a book that deserves more attention.

Fr John Hunwicke

was for nearly three decades at Lancing College; where he taught Latin and Greek language and literature, was Head of Theology, and Assistant Chaplain. He has served three curacies, been a Parish Priest, and Senior Research Fellow at Pusey House in Oxford. Since 2011, he has been in full communion with the See of S Peter. The opinions expressed on this Blog are not asserted as being those of the Magisterium of the Church, but as the writer's opinions as a private individual. Nevertheless, the writer strives, hopes, and prays that the views he expresses are conformable with and supportive of the Magisterium. In this blog, the letters PF stand for Pope Francis.